REDNECK MOTHER SAYS SHE IS NOT A BABY MACHINE

Redneck Mother, in a brilliant post, details her six pregnancies, including four miscarriages. (When she isn't blogging, she is busy "raising lettuce, children and hell in Texas.") She argues:

I think about all this in the context of pharmacists presuming to tell women whether they can prevent a pregnancy or not, of legislators trying to ban "unauthorized reproduction," of Sam Alito and all the other conservatives who want women to answer to men about what's going on in their own bodies. And I say this: You have no idea what you're trying to control, no right to do it and no way to do it to your misguided satisfaction anyway because women are not machines and reproduction is not an industrial process. Pregnancy is unpredictable, carries infinitely variable risks, and is so private that it is in many ways a closed book even to the woman herself. If she and her obstetrical team can't shoehorn it into neat, predictable processes, why do you presume you can? No one has the right or authority to compel any woman to go through what I chose for myself, and no one has the right to judge any woman for choosing not to do so.

As I have confessed to Zan in a prior comments thread, I am not a hundred percent certain when I think the line should be drawn on abortion. I don't know whether Roe drew the line in the right place. But I do support EC, RU48, contraception, and early abortion, and Redneck Mother's observations help illustrate why: pregnancy clearly takes a toll in and of itself apart from the obligation to care for a child and I have no right to dictate that other women undergo this process involuntarily.

The big difference is that I see abortion as the ultimate child abuse. No one should have control over a woman's body but is the child her body or a life in and of its self. That is the question all pro-choicers should be asking themselves.

If a mother was abusing her child you would want the government to step in, wouldn't you? But if the child is still in the mother's womb and being harmed the government should keep their nose out of the mother's business. Because I view the fetus as a human life with rights this is very inconsistent for me. I really think pro-choicers should examine what is happening with the fetus at it's various stages of development instead of just assuming it is a bundle of tissue with no feelings and the mother's to dispose of whenever she feels it is medically or psychologically necessary.

There is a state that has introduced a law that will have doctors tell moms pregnant 20 wks and up that when they undergo the abortion the fetus will more than likely feel pain based on new research. I forget what state it is. I heard it on a blip on the radio.

I think all humans should start with the scientific studies like this that abortion is a lot more than disposing of a non-life.

Well, everyone knows that getting that baby out of its incubator is as easy as clicking a mouse ... woman as container.
Children, too, should be as easy to operate as that. Women and children are just resources to be managed, after all.
Thanks for an insightful piece.